The Little Black Dress That Could

The Little Black Dress That Could

by Karen Brown

Photos: The Uniform Project

In 2009, New Yorker Sheena
Matheiken pledged to wear the same dress every day for one year as an exercise in
sustainable fashion. And she had ambitions greater than just proving a point
about consuming less. As Sheena
recalls, "I knew I wanted to do something of consequence, something that
mattered. Without that, it would just be another 'look at me' exercise."

But first she had a problem: She
didn’t own the kind of dress she wanted to wear and she didn't know how to sew
it herself.

Enter Eliza Starbuck, who
spotted Sheena waiting for the subway. "I was doing a sustainable fashion blog
at the time," said Eliza, "And she was wearing crazy socks. She was adorable
and I had to talk to her. So I went over and said, 'Hi. I’m Eliza, You’ve got
amazing socks and I think we should be friends.'"

Sheena and Eliza began
discussing the idea of a little black dress so versatile that it could be worn
every day. "I proposed the idea almost as a barter,” said Sheena. “If you help
me make this dress I'll help you have a story for your blog."

Eliza designed an original black
cotton dress and made seven identical copies of it, one for each day of the
week. The duo planned to maintain a daily photo blog of the dress for one year—The Uniform Project <theuniformproject.com>—using donated and recycled accessories,
including many vintage, handmade, and one-of-a-kind pieces. They also wanted to
support an open, collaborative dialogue on fashion and sustainability with the
users who would comment on their blog.

But there was more than just
fashion at stake.

A friend in India, where Sheena
was raised and schooled, told her about The Akanksha Foundation. "The majority
of kids who live in the slums and need to earn money for their families get
totally left behind," said Sheena. "And now through Akanksha’s work kids who
otherwise would have never seen anything resembling an education are outperforming
the kids in public schools. When I heard what this organization was doing, I
knew I wanted to get involved."

And that's how The Uniform Project became a fundraiser for Akanksha.

Since its launch in May 2009,
The Uniform Project has attracted over 1,000,000 visitors and raised over
$50,000 for the Akanksha Foundation. That’s enough for about 150 scholarships,
and growing.

David Brower <browercenter.org>, the
Founder of the Sierra Club, once said, "Have fun saving the world, or you are
just going to depress yourself." With all the good work that it is doing,
The Uniform Project has never stopped having fun, like in the photo below from
Halloween. Said Sheena, "We used all the packaging material lying around from
all our accessory donors and handcrafted the flowers that turned me into the
evil sea sprite in the garden."

What would Socrates do?

Inquiry for the classroom using
Socratic dialogues

• Fashion is
often experienced as something designers do for the rest of us. Do you think that handmade, vintage, and recycled clothing like what you see in The Uniform
Project is a realistic alternative to buying fashion ready-made? What
advantages or disadvantages do you think these alternatives might have over
traditional design or the ways we usually get our clothes?

• Sheena and Eliza used their
interest in fashion to launch a fundraiser for school children in India. Do you
have a talent or creative interest that could be used to help others? Could you
do this entirely by yourself, or would you need or want to work with other
people to make it possible? If you worked with others, whom would you like to
work with, and why?

• Does your school have a uniform
or would you like it to have one? What would you design as the perfect uniform
for your school? What kinds of materials would you use, and why? Whom else would
you want to work with to develop the best design for yourself and other
students?

• Do you think students should
be able to accessorize their uniforms the way Sheena does, or do you think
accessories defeat the purpose of having a standard uniform? At school, what do
you think is the right balance between a standard uniform and self-expression, and
why?

Fashion is not my area of expertise, but this reminds me that sustainability issues are present in every realm. It is great to see people acting outside the mainstream patterns of behavior and creating new paradigms for the rest of us to consider.

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About the Author

Karen Brown

Karen Brown, creative director of the Center for Ecoliteracy (www.ecoliteracy.org), has worked with the Center for over a decade. Her work has been included in the Smithsonian Institution and Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, and featured in The New York Times, Architectural Digest, and NBC's Today Show.